News tagged with north atlantic ocean

The sun's activity could be affecting a key ocean circulation mechanism that plays an important role in regulating Greenland's climate, according to a new study. The phenomenon could be partially responsible for cool temperatures ...

Retreating sea ice in the Iceland and Greenland Seas may be changing the circulation of warm and cold water in the Atlantic Ocean, and could ultimately impact the climate in Europe, says a new study by an atmospheric physicist ...

A more tailored approach to Ocean management is required in the North Atlantic if the permanent loss of an increasingly valuable commercial fish stock is to be avoided, reveals new research led by the University of Salford.

A new record of past climate change shows that a warm climate in northern Europe can be hit by a sudden cooling associated with an interruption of the North Atlantic Ocean circulation and the Gulf Stream. This is shown in ...

A new study shows how huge influxes of fresh water into the North Atlantic Ocean from icebergs calving off North America during the last ice age had an unexpected effect - they increased the production of methane in the tropical ...

The American eel has been a concern for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service since 2007, when it was first considered for, but failed to receive, Endangered Species Act protection. The numbers of these slender, slimy, ancient ...

Around 55 million years ago, an abrupt global warming event triggered a highly corrosive deep-water current through the North Atlantic Ocean. The current's origin puzzled scientists for a decade, but an international team ...

Scientists are using a variety of buoys and autonomous underwater vehicles to record and archive sounds from marine mammals and fish species in the western North Atlantic through a new listening network known as the U.S. ...

The ocean has been sucking up heat-trapping carbon dioxide (CO2) building up in our atmosphere—with a little help from tiny plankton. Like plants on land, these plankton convert CO2 into organic carbon via photosynthesis. ...

Atlantic Ocean

The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions; with a total area of about 106.4 million square kilometres (41.1 million square miles). It covers approximately one-fifth of the Earth's surface. The first part of its name refers to the Atlas of Greek mythology, making the Atlantic the "Sea of Atlas". The oldest known mention of this name is contained in The Histories of Herodotus around 450 BC (I 202); see also: Atlas Mountains. Another name historically used was the ancient term Ethiopic Ocean, derived from Ethiopia, whose name was sometimes used as a synonym for all of Africa and thus for the ocean. Before Europeans discovered other oceans, the term "ocean" itself was to them synonymous with the waters beyond Western Europe that we now know as the Atlantic and which the Greeks had believed to be a gigantic river encircling the world; see Oceanus.

The Atlantic Ocean occupies an elongated, S-shaped basin extending longitudinally between the Americas to the west, and Eurasia and Africa to the east. A component of the all-encompassing World Ocean, it is connected in the north to the Arctic Ocean (which is sometimes considered a sea of the Atlantic), to the Pacific Ocean in the southwest, the Indian Ocean in the southeast, and the Southern Ocean in the south. (Alternatively, in lieu of it connecting to the Southern Ocean, the Atlantic may be reckoned to extend southward to Antarctica.) The equator subdivides it into the North Atlantic Ocean and South Atlantic Ocean but for physical purposes the division is rotated slightly counter-clockwise to a line roughly from the Bolama region, Guinea-Bissau to Rio Grande do Norte state, Brazil to include the Gulf of Guinea with the South Atlantic and the north coast of South America with the North Atlantic.